The Tale of the Weightless Feather
by TrueBlood Twilight
Summary: Bella is a young woman, lost and dying in the woods. She is in utter distress as she takes her last breaths of life. Yet, before the angel of death comes for her, there is another; one who has watched her all his life. Will he defy God and save her?


**Disclaimer: All character names are owned by Stephanie Meyer; all original content, plot and storyline are owned by me, tbt.**

**As always, I respectfully thank my beta Evenflo78 for her time, and her encouraging words.**

**(This story was written for the Fics For Nashville fundraiser. Thank you to those that generously donated.)**

**Author's Notes: Ielahiah is the name of a fallen angel, once of the order of virtues.**

_Black Forest, Germany 1565 Bella's POV_

As the sun sets, I sense that it is dire that I return home, yet something is beckoning me to continue, and my thoughts are scattered and torn as the death of my good friend still burns within my soul; my being is broken.

The flu has caused a tremendous amount of fear within our village, and no one is immune to the grips of the Angel of Death, but alas, as I have kept myself healthy, clean and proper, the Angel used me as its vessel; I had taken ill and though recovered, sickened my very dear friend Amalie.

It had not been long until her symptoms overwhelmed her, and I could not help but think, is this good or is it bad? Should I wish for someone to remain in misery, prolong their pain? On the other hand, shall I pray that she be spared, quicken her death?

Within two weeks, she had become so sickly, she could not even speak, nor could she catch her bearings; her world around her had all but dissolved into her past. My last moments with Amalie, were that of my re-telling of our child hood. Though she was not awake, it seemed to comfort me, to express my love for my dear friend. We were like sisters of the same age, and here before our seventeenth birthday, my future ahead of me, she lay dying. Quietly, she passed in the very early morning of September 8.

Since then, I could not help but feel heavy with guilt as I celebrated my birthday, my seventeenth year of being alive and well.

As I try to leave my sorrow behind me here in the woods, I begin to find myself drifting further and further within the forest. The black sky consuming its brother light, leaving only darkness to have its way with me.

Snacking on a few berries that I had unknowingly picked and eaten, I begin to feel dizzy and disoriented. However, my body continues to move, and what I had thought had been an attempt to make my way back to our village, had only left me buried within the decayed leaves, weathered trunks and malevolent shadows.

As I finally come to the realization that I am lost, I look down at two of the berries still tightly gripped within my right hand, blood red juice had stained my skin.

I drop them suddenly as I understand my misfortune. I had picked the wrong berries, and I was now slowly succumbing to the poison of these deadly seeds.

My breathing as if on cue, starts to become labored and short, and I panic as I hold my chest, begging for breath, begging for my life. I stumble back a few steps until my spine are flush with that of a tree; my only support. I can only fear my death will be a slow and agonizing one as the toxins from the berries take hold of my nervous system and finally my heart.

As I glance at all around me, I slide slowly and cautiously to the base of the trunk, my vision blurred, and my only sense still acute is that of my hearing. It is then that I hear them.

The growls of beasts, the bringers of my ending.

I close my eyes and try to gauge how many are around me, but it is hard for me to decipher. I open my eyes and though my vision is polluted, I can make out the shapes of at the very least, five of them. They are wolves.

I feel my soul has given up, and I can do nothing, nor run from this horrid situation.

As I lay here, the poison speeding through my blood, I cannot help but think will it be the wolf, or the poison that will claim me? I beg for the latter.

Closing my eyes, I prepare for the gnashing of teeth, the ripping of my flesh. I can smell their hunger dripping from their snouts, as they make their descent towards me.

I begin to silently pray.

It is then that I feel nothing, and this strikes me as odd. What should have been unbearable pain, is only silence. Have I been spared the actual moments of my death? Am I in heaven? I can only think of my friend Amalie.

Then the oddest sensation tickles my back. My back, I wonder?

It is that of warmth, and it feels heavy but light at the same time. It is the strangest sensation, and as I try to determine what it is that is touching me, I open my eyes to complete abyss, yet I can see.

Slowly, this object pulls away from my body and the beams of the moonlight are now visible. In front of me is a man, crouched down and facing me. He is the most handsome being I have ever gazed upon. He is oddly wearing only trousers, and his chest is chiseled and muscular. Not one weakened area; he is fitter than any woodcutter or iron worker whom I have ever met.

His skin is luminous and seems to be ablaze before me. This is when I understand that it is not the moon that has given me light, but the man before me. He is the one creating radiant rays.

As he looks back at me, his eyes are but black orbs. They pierce me and I find myself shy and wanting to hide from his glare.

Sensing this, the young man rises, standing before me while extending a hand to assist me up. As I place my hand in his, a mountain of questions begins to consume me, and I find myself faint from confusion.

"You are safe now Bella," he says softly.

I try to muster my own words, but nothing will slip from my lips.

"I have saved you from the poison that was ravaging your body, and I have subdued the wolves. They will not harm you, but guide you back to the village," he adds.

What does he mean, he has saved me? And then I remember. I was dying from the poisonous berries, my vision had been blurred, and I could not even breathe. Nevertheless, here I am standing before him, my vision restored, my body anew.

Suddenly, I become terrified as I think of the wolves, but as I look around me, they are sitting patiently at his command.

How can this be?

"Who and what are you? Did you perform magic on me?" I ask. Silly I would be concerned with that right now, yet a part of me wanted to believe in him. For there he stood, wolves behind him; my body cleansed of toxins.

"Will you believe me when I speak?" A gleam of amusement flashes in his beautiful coal black eyes.

"What choice do I have now, please do explain yourself. I am cold and scared," I begin to plead. I hated being in this position, and I hated that something was happening to me. What I did not know. Again, I had to think. Am I deceased?

"Bella, you are not dead."

"How did you know what I was thinking?" I question.

"I am an Angel." And with those words, I start to lose consciousness.

Catching my falling body, his wings become fully extended. I gasp as he holds me in his arms but suddenly my emotions begin to change within me. From the touch of his skin, a sense of comfort permeates me. I feel no fear, I feel no outside world.

If you would have asked me at that moment, I could have lived my entire life, encapsulated within the strength of his arms. All my misery, sorrow, pain, confusion, fear, all the negative things that any normal human would face, seems to dissipate from the slightest touch of his angelic skin.

Helping me back up to my feet, I pull back a few inches, and watch his delicate wings spread and move behind him. It is hard to determine their size but they must be easily 20 feet in length on each side. They are glorious and move like those of an insect, without effort, without force. I have the urge to touch them, but instead find my hands caressing the top of his shoulders, desperate to fondle his back, his chest, his lips.

Whispering, I ask his name.

"My name is Ielahiah, but if it is easier and pleases you, you may call me Edward."

It takes a moment to remember why that name affects me. Then I remember the young boy that I had known and played with. He had passed at a tender age, and I always held his name close to my heart. I had vowed one day that if I ever gave birth to a boy, then I would adorn him with that name in honor of the little boy I played with.

"It pleases me Edward. So you are a guardian Angel?" I ask, and as if my words were venomous and hurtful, Edward retreats back a few steps leaving me desperate to be wrapped within his arms again. Have I offended him?

"Bella, I am not a guardian Angel, and I am not good. I am a fallen Angel." He says as his face becomes firm with intent. His eyes still brilliant black, look to me for my response.

But whatever caused his fall, whatever he may have done, he had chosen to save me. He had been gentle and kind, and his touch seared my inner soul, and all I could think of in that very moment was; I forgive you.

"My disobedience is not for you to forgive," he whispers, his eyes gazing down upon the ground, his eyebrows tightened in stress.

"But I love you," I reply, edging slowly towards him, each step agonizing, as I want nothing more in this world than to be with him.

"You know not what you speak of," he continues. Why must he torture me in this fashion? I feel myself become infuriated and angry and in a show of my own defiance, I speak out loud to him.

"If you did not want me to love you, then you should have let me die! Do you regret saving me? I know you understand how I feel, you have responded without my words."

"Nevertheless, I can hurt you, Bella. This is why I cannot allow you to love me, yet I could not bear to see you die. I had fallen so long ago, that I had forgotten what it was to care for another, to care for anything. When you were born, I watched you grow. There was something different about you, and though I am not your guardian angel, I had come to care for you as one.

"Your true guardian angel despises me, and loathes me, and we argue incessantly over your welfare. Though both of us have only one intention, and that is to keep you safe. His being out of obligation, mine as you grew older, out of love.

"We both tried so many times to steer you on the right path, but your dark sorrow over the death of your friend prevailed. When you ate your poisonous berries, alas, there was nothing your angel could do for you at that point."

As I hear him speak, I find myself considerably conflicted. All it took was one touch, and within that touch, my heart had yearned for him. Then as he pulled from me, spoke that I could not love him, I became angry and violent, and I wanted nothing more than to scream for him to love me back.

Though he cleansed my body of those natural toxins, he had replaced it with venom as my love for him, was now my poison.

"But you did. You saved me, as you said yourself. So why can I not say that I love you?" I ask, tears welling in my eyes.

"Because we can never be. What I did for you, was for my own selfish reasons. I again have acted against God and one day I will pay, but Bella, you have the chance to live. You are different, you are an innocent human. I will suffer the consequences of my actions, but all I ask from you, is that you continue to thrive and live. Find true love with a man that can bring you a child. Prosper."

Defeated, I let my arms hang at my side and as if his words were not piercing enough, he steps forward and lays a kiss upon my lips. My arms instinctively wrap around him and with all my might I pull him as close to me as he will allow.

As our lips blend, the world but once again dissolve around me, giving me the sensation that all that was in existence was that of I, and my fallen angel. With a searing heat from his mouth, his tongue darts out burning my own but causing me to moan without thought.

As our embrace deepens, I want to melt into this heavenly creation. How could something so beautiful be punished by God? Can he be forgiven, for surely he has shown that he can love and _be_ loved?

Pulling back slowly, Edward keeps his eyes closed, while his tongue continues to lick the outer rim of his mouth. "It was everything that I had imagined it to be." He says with such a desire of that of a child tasting candy for the first time.

"How can we not be, Edward? Surely, Angels have fallen in the past, whatever did you do?" I ask with anger. For surely, here we are now and no pain has been bestowed upon me.

"Bella, I fell when I followed Lucipher." He says sternly, his facial features now indifferent. "I have committed the ultimate sin."

I sigh as I hear the name of the _one_ he chose.

"But you have repented, have you not? I know that you understand what I am saying. You are not damned Edward. I will not stop loving you. I will never love another." I speak with conviction. However, with my last words, there is a flicker of a light and at that moment; complete and utter sorrow drowns me. He is gone, a feather in his place.

~o~

_Hohenworth Abbey, Bavaria, Germany 1615_

"Sister Bella, Sister Bella! Again, please tell us again!" cried the children.

"Dear ones, have I not spoken this tale of the weightless feather, time and time again?" I said as I ushered the orphans out into the brilliant summer sun. As the rays of warmth lit my face, I instinctively rubbed my weathered eyes. I have become old, and feeble. Entering the nunnery shortly after that fateful day, shortly after my seventeenth birthday, all I had was time.

"We want to know more about the angel!" Little Anna shouted back.

Of course she does, the children always do, but instead I blow her a kiss and turn to walk back to my chambers where I give myself a moment in peace after I tell this story to the children; for them it is for amusement, for me, it is my first memory of _him_.

For the children, I tell a very skeletal version of the story and not without the watchful eye of Sister Bernadette, who gives me an indiscernible look when I speak of angels visiting and interfering with mankind. In my hand, teasingly I wave a feather. To all it is but a useless plume, a prop to only further the children's desire to study angelology, to listen to my story.

To me, it is one of _many_ that I keep in a box under my bed, and as I said that night in the Black Forest. I would never love another.

**Author's Notes: If you enjoyed the story, would you care to hear about the other feathers?**


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